Home to thousands since the '60s, largest public housing complex in East St. Louis to come down
EAST ST. LOUIS — A wrecking ball is expected to start swinging Tuesday into the largest public housing complex in East St. Louis, a place thousands of people have called home since Lyndon B. Johnson was president.
Lansdowne Towers holds nearly a fifth of the beleaguered city’s public housing stock, or 365 units, spread across four buildings at 2901 Waverly Avenue. Crews have been cleaning out two of the buildings — Ruggeri and Brenton — for weeks. Rukavina, the only building still occupied, and Starnes will be razed next.
“The buildings are old,” Mildred Motley, executive director of the East St. Louis Housing Authority, said in a recent interview. “The systems have outlived their useful life. And we had bedbug issues that would have taken a lot of money to get that situation eradicated. We just felt it was in our best interest to tear those units down.”
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development took over East St. Louis public housing from the local housing authority in 1985 due to poor living conditions and fraud. HUD Secretary Ben Carson returned the portfolio to local control in 2017.
Read more: https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/home-to-thousands-since-the-s-largest-public-housing-complex/article_ee3d0b32-63ad-570c-a227-609e6d55effa.html